Principle: URI/Identifier Space (principle 3)

• Overview
• Open (principle 1)
• Common Format (principle 2)
• URI/Identifier Space (principle 3)
• Versioning (principle 4)
• Scope (principle 5)
• Textual Definitions (principle 6)
• Relations (principle 7)
• Documentation (principle 8)
• Documented Plurality of Users (principle 9)
• Commitment To Collaboration (principle 10)
• Locus of Authority (principle 11)
• Naming Conventions (principle 12)
• Maintenance (principle 16)
• Responsiveness (principle 20)

Details

Each class and relation (property) in the ontology must have a unique URI identifier. The URI should be constructed from a base URI, a prefix that is unique within the Foundry (e.g. GO, CHEBI, CL) and a local identifier (e.g. 0000001). The local identifier should not consist of labels or mnemonics meaningful to humans. Additional information is available at http://www.obofoundry.org/id-policy

The ID-space / prefix must be registered with the OBO Library in advance. Please see the relevant documentation.

This check is automatically validated.

OBO-Format Ontologies

If the source ontology is in OBO-Format, then this is automatically satisfied so long as all IDs are of the form <IDSPACE> : <NUMBER>

Date Accepted

• original principle

History

Original Formulation

 The ontologies possesses a unique identifier space within
the OBO Foundry.

The source of a term (i.e. class) from any ontology can be immediately
identified by the prefix of the identifier of each term. It is,
therefore, important that this prefix be unique. 

Examples

The OBI class ‘imaging assay’ has the following URI: http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/OBI_0000185

Counter-Examples

• There are systems that use alphanumeric id’s. This should be discouraged, especially as these have semantic content.